According to the State Of Global Workplace study by Gallup, 85% of employees are not engaged in the workplace.
Disengaged employees turn into unproductive employees that you have to eventually replace and replacing an employee is not an affordable undertaking.
Studies show, on average, the total cost of finding a new resource and onboarding them to your organisation is over $5000!
In other words, disengaged employees can cost your business a lot of money.
Now, there are many ways for a business to engage their employees. However, mostly categorized under 'employee engagement activities', these are barely effective.
While traditional employee engagement is fast becoming obsolete, businesses now have another alternative to genuinely engage their employees- professional development.
Professional development opportunities available at an organisation are an increasingly popular metric for new and existing employees weighing their employment opportunities. Moreover, with the rise of learning management systems and other elearning tools, training employees is easier and cheaper than ever before!
Take Mindflash LMS for example, a market leading product that serves small and medium sized businesses. The Mindflash LMS Pricing allows businesses to train their employees starting at just $599 for an entire year!
With that said, you may already know of many employee training programs that are barely alive because they fail to engage employees. THat happens because not all employee training initiatives are made alike.
If you want yours to make a difference, and contribute to keeping your employees engaged, try out one of these tips:
Provide Employees A Chance To Grow With Your Business
Small businesses are growing more rapidly than ever before, partly thanks to the accessibility offered by the web. As such businesses grow, their needs grow and new positions are created to address said needs.
If your business is in a similar stage, professional training can help your existing employees grow with your business. Training your employees to fill up the new positions that open up because of the growth of your business has many benefits:
You can expect more loyalty from your employees in exchange in investing in their future in the form of professional training and a promotion.
You have to spend less time and money filling up entry-level positions, as higher positions are filled with your existing and better trained workforce.
You build a positive reputation for your brand as an employer, enabling you to attract a better breed of professional talent.
With that said, in order to enjoy all these benefits, you must pay attention to the focus of your training initiatives.
Tie Training Performance With Tangible Employee Benefits
Getting employees motivated for training can be a challenging undertaking. However, if you associate training performance with some sort of incentives or rewards, the job becomes much easier.
The best part is, you don't even have to make these rewards monetary in nature. Any sort of reward can potentially make a difference in the motivation of an employee regarding training.
Provide Employees With Relevant Training Opportunities
When thinking about offering employees professional development opportunities, it is natural to think about how these opportunities will benefit your business with a better resource. However, this shouldn't be your only consideration.
Unless your employees see the relevance of training with their own development, they will not be motivated or may not even view it as an added perk.
Conclusion
Small businesses need to instill a sense of belongingness within their employees as soon as possible. With employee training, doing this is possible and as a result, it is also possible to boost employee engagement.
